Saturday, April 28, 2012

SEGUE DENVER

Sixty-six games sandwiched into a short
window and done. It’s easy to say the season was strange,
uneven, that it seemed to play out overnight. It’s only a snippet
born of easy comparison. There’s nothing short about sixty-six
games, especially for the teams who bottomed out quickly and had to
continue playing.

The conversation about tanking went
completely viral and you have to wonder how that felt to players who
strap on ice packs, limp onto buses, eat on the fly, and get ready to
do it again the next night. You have to wonder what it feels like to
blow out a knee or jam a finger into something that will never look
the same again, to schedule an emergency trip to a dentist in strange
city and check into your room and turn on the TV to discover that
your team didn’t come to play last night – you thought you
came to play and you vaguely remember having a halfway decent game
before you fouled out and walked off, as fans with twisted
faces screamed obscenities and hawked loogies while security guards
stared toward the floor. Or was that the night before, or the one
before that.

Basketball
happens in a moment, rising up as an elbow’s coming
down.

“They
opened my whole head, pulled my face out and fixed it. Obviously
there were a lot of loose pieces they had to put back together like a
puzzle, but they did an amazing job." Eduardo Najera, Charlotte Bobcats

I
doubt Najera ever tanked a game in his life, Does that mean
the all-consuming conversation has no merit? Of course not. There’s
players who care in a losing season and those that don’t. There
were owners who wanted to toss the entire schedule before it began,
and there’s the ones who would rather lose during the
games they never wanted in the first place. And there’s coaches who
balance phone calls they wish they hadn’t taken, against the
reality that they probably won’t have a job next year anyway.

Sixteen
teams managed to get into sixteen slots, jockeying for position, some
brave enough to cut to the inside rail. Congratulations. You bought yourself at least four more games. And you’ve been analyzed
and ranked and rationalized and you’ve had numbers and letters and
equations assigned to you, and you have a chance or you don’t
have a fucking chance and you’re
cool, you say you don’t listen anyway, it’s a game, it’s a
business, it’s a dream, it’s a failure, it’s a championship,
it’s a trip back to the D-league, it’s wondering if your contract
will get picked up, it’s talking to your kids on the phone, it’s
your coaches screaming in your ear, it’s a hard drive to a basket
that grows higher every year and finishing at the rim and getting
hammered to the floor and a trip to the stripe to make it three and
put your team ahead with one second left on the clock.

Congratulations,
you’re in the playoffs.

I don’t know
these Denver Nuggets very well, they’re mostly young and fast, and
they have the future ahead of them. A sea of ink seemed to disappear
overnight. It didn’t really, but it seemed that way. Just like the
season seemed short. Chris Andersen has enough ink left for any three
players but he doesn’t seem to count anymore, he’s only a
reminder of a different era.

George Karl is from
a different era as well. He knows about ice packs and bus rides, the
days before the 24 hour news cycle. His headlong plunges earned him
the nickname ‘the Kamikaze Kid’ at North Carolina. He’s played
and coached in the ABA, CBA, NBA and Spain. He drove from one city to
the next in a Ford van. He once coached Seattle in the ‘96 finals
and lost to Phil Jackson’s Bulls. He didn’t know if he’d live
to see another season, more than once. And he’s got his kids
playing fast and loose and might just decide to empty his clip in
this round. I wouldn’t count his team out.

Kobe Bryant put
aside the scoring title on the last night of the regular season in order to rest
for this series. His 58 games didn’t feel short - torn wrist
ligaments, a broken nose, a concussion, soft tissue damage to the
neck and a tendon shaft inside his shin that became inflamed. Ramon
Sessions arrived for the end of the season.
Andrew Bynum grabbed 30 rebounds one night and two rebounds a few
nights later. Pau Gasol was relieved to learn that he’d still be a Laker and Metta World Peace will be spending the first round on his
smart phone, typing not so smart things. And if you want a snapshot
analysis of the team’s chances, look again at the fourth quarter
and two overtime periods against OKC, when they came from eighteen
back with a lineup that featured Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Jordan Hill,
Devin Ebanks, and Steve Blake. And simply shut them down.

It’s hot and
humid and the wind is blowing. I take the dog outside, a few lone
cicadas have begun their incessant electrical buzz again. Segue
Denver.